In spite of the increasing sophistication and power of commercial spreadsheet
packages, we still lack a formal theory or a methodology to support the construction
and maintenance of spreadsheet models. Using a dual logical/physical
perspective, we identify four principal components that characterize any spreadsheet
model: schema, data, editorial, and binding. We present a factoring
algorithm for identifying and extracting these components from conventional
spreadsheets with minimal user intervention, and a synthesis algorithm that assists
users in the construction of executable spreadsheets from reusable model
components. This approach opens new possibilities for applying object-oriented
and model management techniques to support the construction, sharing, and
reuse, of spreadsheet models in organizations. Importantly, our approach to
model management and the Windows-based prototype that we have developed
are designed to coexist with, rather than replace, traditional spreadsheet programs.
In other words, the users are not required to learn a new modeling
language; instead, their logical models and data sets are extracted from their
spreadsheets transparently, as a side-effect of using standard spreadsheet program.

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